


The ghost of you in the air somewhere

by solarfemm



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Ableism, Coming Out, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, M/M, Pining, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-04-08 05:00:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19100206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarfemm/pseuds/solarfemm
Summary: Steve picks fights and loses.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I found this list of Steve's illnesses and wanted to write about it because we have so much in common https://historicallyaccuratesteve.tumblr.com/post/90483251181/chronically-ill-steve-rogers

It’s Steve’s fourth bout of sinusitis leaving him practically bedridden for almost six days that has Bucky banging down his door on the fifth, shouting that he’s “gonna pick you up and shake you, Steve Rogers, if you don’t let me in,” loud enough that Steve can hear it. Hell, Ms Rafferty, who lives down the block and comes by once a week with a meatloaf to ask him whether that handsome Mr Barnes wants to meet her niece, can probably hear it, too.

Steve sighs and heaves himself off the ratty sofa he and Bucky found on the sidewalk a couple summers back, mercifully free of piss stains and dog hair, and, swallowing a wad of gunk in his throat, opens the door. Bucky’s angry, but at the sight of Steve he deflates. He never could stand up to Steve in a fight, and what does that tell him? Maybe that’s why Steve keeps fighting, because he knows he’ll win some no matter how many he loses.

“Tell me you’re not just moping around the apartment getting snot everywhere.” Bucky pushes past him, but not without a quick squeeze of Steve’s shoulder. He goes straight to the cupboards, opening them just to stare at the nothing inside. “Jeez, no wonder you’re sick. You’ve got nothing to eat.”

“I’m sick ‘cause I’m always sick, Buck.”

Steve drops back onto the sofa and pulls a blanket around himself. He’s burning up but the weight of it is comforting. It’s only when Bucky starts to unpack it that Steve notices the bag of groceries Bucky has, tins of food and fresh vegetables, and Steve exhales angrily.

“You’re not my mother, Buck. You don’t need to look after me. I can take care of myself.”

Bucky turns to face him with a hard set to his jaw. “Just let me do this, okay? You’ve been so moody lately and shut in this damn apartment that between that and me working all the time I barely get to see you. So you’re gonna shut your trap about it while I make something to eat.”

Steve grumbles but he’s too tired to argue more than that. He watches Bucky move around the kitchen, pulling out the single pot Steve has, his back a solid sight of muscle, his sleeves rolled up to show the veins in them. It’s a sight Steve never tires of. Bucky starts cutting up the vegetables and Steve puts the radio on so Bucky has something to sing to while he works, the way he likes to. Eventually he starts throwing things into the pot, and soon the whole apartment smells like a home-cooked meal.

“I got your liver juice, by the way.” Bucky tosses it to him, and Steve looks at it with disgust. “Don’t make that face. It’s better than eating a pound of raw meat a day.”

Steve shrugs and takes a gulp, grimacing at the taste of it. “Tastes worse than what’s going on in my nose right now.” Bucky laughs, at Steve’s joke or his face or his nose, and it fills the rest of the room that the smell of the food doesn’t. Bucky wipes his hands on a dish cloth and drops next to Steve on the couch, pulling him in with an arm around his shoulders. “Don’t, Buck. You’re gonna get sick.”

“Me? Sick? Immune system of a stallion, I have.”

“That is so not true. Every time you get a cold it’s, ‘Oh Steve, put me out of my misery, I’ll never survive this blight’.”

Bucky laughs again, pulling Steve in tighter until Steve has no choice but to rest his head against Bucky’s chest and listen to the way his heart pounds, deep and steady. No choice at all. “Yeah, you’re the fighter out of the two of us. You may lose the battles, but you win the whole war.” Bucky usually smells like motor oil or ocean salt, but Steve can’t smell anything right now with what his nose is doing, and he curses it silently. He knows what Bucky means, but it just makes his heart sink. Steve’s going to die one day, probably soon. He’ll come up against something that’ll make his heart give out completely, and Bucky will have to be the one to bury him. He has grease in the crevices of his trimmed nails and Steve hopes it didn’t get on the food, not that he’d be able to taste the difference. 

He’s going to die. He knows that with a certainty that makes his heart beat faster and more irregularly. Bucky knows it, too, but he’d never admit it, because the only things keeping Steve Rogers going are his pride and Bucky’s belief in him. He falls asleep before the food finishes, but when he wakes up Bucky is still there, reading at the other end of the sofa with Steve’s feet in his lap.

Steve coughs a little, as much as he can with so little energy, and Bucky drops his book.

“Thanks for scaring me half to death,” Bucky says. He rubs his eyes. It must be late, but Bucky stayed over anyway, as he is wont to do when Steve gets like this.

“You save any of that food or you eat the whole lot?”

“In the pot.”

Steve manages to get himself up and spoon some stew into a bowl, and another for Bucky, whose hunger never ceases now he’s working ten hour shifts at the docks when he’s not at the shop. Steve picks at his food while the radio plays the station Bucky loves, the one that features guitars and pianos and Sister Rosetta’s voice singing about how it’s nobody’s fault but hers, and it’s so nice, despite the circumstances that brought Bucky over, for them to have a meal together, listen to music, and just to be in each other’s company.

“I’ve been thinking about moving in,” Bucky says, and there’s something about the way he says it that doesn’t immediately make Steve groan. Bucky anticipates it anyway, and continues, “Not because I think you need it, all right, but because it’ll be good for me. Ma wants me to stay long as I can, but I need my space.”

Steve keeps eating, despite his lack of appetite. The food is good, what he can taste of it, and Bucky made it, so he needs to try. Steve doesn’t rebut with something about how if Bucky wants space, he’d do better at the Y than a single bed in a one-bedroom apartment with a guy who’s coughing up his lungs every other night. But Steve knows why Bucky really wants to, and he’s tired. Fuck, he’s so tired. He’s tired enough that fighting the inevitability of his various illnesses and how they’ll put him in his grave just seems so hopeless, and Bucky’s offering him something: companionship. If Steve has to go, in the night, in his sleep, or falling down the stairs from a dizzy spell because his lungs or heart give out, at least Bucky will be within arm’s distance. At least Steve will be found before the neighbourhood cats get to him.

Bucky looks so tentatively worried that Steve might say no that it brings a smile to Steve’s face. “Sure, Buck. Yeah, I think that’d be good for you.”

And that settles it. It takes Bucky all of a day and one trip to pack his things and bring them over, and then it’s just them and their crappy apartment that they share. Steve and Bucky, Bucky and Steve.

~

It takes Steve a couple months to notice, but once he does he can’t stop until it starts eating at him.

“You haven’t brought any girls over.” He says, and Bucky bites his lip as he puts his glass down. They’re in a new bar this time, because Steve started a fight and got banned from the one they usually go to, and Steve likes this one. There’s a man wearing a fake skunk as a scarf, and several women in suits. No girls have tried to hit on Bucky, which means less competition for Steve. Not that it’s a competition, of course, but Steve likes it when Bucky chooses to come back to the apartment after dancing the night away with some beautiful dame. It makes him feel special.

“Yeah, well, Steve. I didn’t want to make you feel uncomfortable.”

Steve rolls his eyes. “You gotta stop it, Buck. I’m not your pregnant wife who needs her feet rubbed every night. You gotta stop thinking of me as some invalid. I can handle you, your life. That’s what I signed up for when you moved in.”

Something dark passes over Bucky’s face and he looks Steve straight in the eye, his gaze cold enough to know that Steve fucked up. “I would never think of you that way,” he says, his voice low and gruff. “You’re not what makes you sick. You’re a person, Steve. You’re my best friend. If you ever--” His voice shakes before he gets it under control. “Don’t describe yourself that way, okay? Because you’re not.” He downs the rest of his drink and stands up. “I’m getting another.”

Steve doesn’t wait for him. He slips out while Bucky’s ordering and heads home, to their home. He’s still awake at three in the morning when Bucky stumbles in, mattress springs on his bed groaning as he makes himself comfortable, and Steve realises why he’s still awake: he couldn’t sleep without knowing Bucky was there.

~

The thing that Steve remembers most about their childhood is that they always were inseparable. It’s only now that Bucky goes out earlier and comes back later, smelling of sweat and the acrid scent of liquor, toeing off his shoes with a groan that says he stayed out all night dancing, and probably more, that Steve remembers it. He usually has a hard time sleeping as it is, but after becoming accustomed to Bucky being in his space, he finds he can’t sleep without him.

Tonight he wants to roll over and apologise so that they can go back to the way things were before, but before he can he hears something that gives him pause: after Bucky undoes his belt and slides out of his clothes, Steve hears the pop of a cap and something slick, rapid movements, and a groan that signals exactly what he’s doing.

Steve can’t get hard at the best of times, not when just breathing is difficult enough, and staying hard long enough to jerk off to completion with just his hand and imagination for company is damn near impossible, but suddenly--oh. Steve’s dick stirs with interest just listening to Bucky’s bitten off moans and the way he fails to be quiet. So he must’ve struck out then. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. He’s thought about it before, of course. What Bucky’s hands must feel like, his mouth even. What it would be like to taste him, his mouth, his cock. Steve’s thought about it a lot, with varying degrees of interest from his dick. It’s the only thing that can get him hard and make him stay that way without all the noise in his head and the aches in his body interfering.

And now--now he gets to hear what Bucky sounds like. His exhales, the catches in his breathing, the sound of his hand speeding up, and then--his grunt as he comes, as if it’s punched out of his body. Steve’s definitely hard now, and aching to rut against something, but he can’t while Bucky’s awake. He can’t give himself away like that. Bucky has his girls, and his dancehalls, and his whiskey, and Steve has the sight of Bucky in a t-shirt with a smudge of grease on his cheek, or the warm weight of Bucky’s back as he sits on it while Bucky does push ups, or the slender taper of his waist when Steve does still-lifes of him. And now, he has this.

Bucky’s breathing slows to normal and it’s the only sound in the room now that Steve’s holding his own. It’s so quiet, just aching to be broken, a thread spun and snapped. When it does break, the sound of his own name escaping Bucky’s lips startles him.

“Steve?” It’s testing to see if he’s awake. Steve can’t let Bucky know he heard, because if Bucky knows he heard, he’ll expect some joke, and Steve can’t give it right now. He can barely make his throat swallow with how tight it is. The bed springs creak again and Bucky pads over to Steve’s side of the room, and Steve exhales, inhales, exhales his laboured breath. “Thank god,” Bucky mutters, and Steve can feel the tension leave his body. “If you die on me, you bastard…” Bucky bends down to press a kiss to Steve’s hairline before he retreats to the bathroom, and the lingering sensation burns long after Steve’s fallen asleep.

~

The war goes on in continents Steve’s never been to, closer to his parents’ birthplace than his own. American men start getting drafted left and right and turned into fine-tuned machines, and everyday Steve is both scared Bucky’s gonna be one of them and angry that he himself isn’t. He tries, anyway. Good lord, does he try.

If Bucky’s scared of what’s going to happen, he doesn’t let Steve see it, but then again that’s how it’s always been between them. Bucky thinks he has to be the saviour, the protector, the white knight to Steve’s damsel, and fuck if Steve hasn’t spent his life trying to prove him wrong. He swears he doesn’t need saving, but then he’s getting his ass beat behind some dumpster and who just happens to turn up, right before Steve gets knocked out cold, ready to haul him back to the apartment and nurse his split lip the way Steve’s mama taught him to? Bucky. It’s always been Bucky. As far as Steve’s concerned, his world starts and ends with Bucky, there’s just a lot of horrific shit in between. 

Steve gets a job at the shop down the road trading candy for cash and shooing away teenagers from the front of the store when they stand outside smoking for too long, which ties him over until he gets a job at the museum taking concessions. He has dreams, big dreams that don’t include a canvas and paint anymore, the way they once did. The dreams are him and Bucky on the front lines, taking down whatever scum gets in their way. When he shares this one day, Bucky doesn’t laugh. He looks at Steve with something scary in his eyes and says, “Naivety and ignorance don’t suit you, Steve,” which only serves to make Steve want it more. 

Bucky tries to drag Steve out dancing with him, promising it’ll be fun this time, he’s found a new place to go, and Steve relents. He doesn’t drink well, and he doesn’t need it to have a good time, so he stays clear of the hard stuff. It’s enough just watching Bucky dance, looking at his arms on some girl’s waist, holding her close, even as he burns with jealousy at the sight. He can almost imagine that he’s that girl, but the thought of Bucky ever wanting him like that when he could have anyone is too ridiculous to entertain for long.

Still, he agrees, and ends up surprised to find the place isn’t the usual bar they go to. Bucky fidgets nervously with his hands as he leads the way in, and Steve realises why when they head inside. The people there—they’re not like the crowd at other bars. There are women dancing with women, men dancing with men, men dressed like women, women kissing each other, people of indeterminate gender—it’s a lot. Steve grabs Bucky’s arm as they reach the bar. 

“Did you mean to take me to a queer joint?” Steve’s not opposed, he just—feels out of place. This environment is somewhere he’s never been, with or without Bucky, and he didn’t think Bucky would be here, either.

Bucky clears his throat and orders for them. “Well, I didn’t stumble in here with you by accident.”

“I thought maybe you did and didn’t notice what was going on.” 

“What do you take me for?”

“A lot of things, pal.” But queer isn’t one of them.

“Can’t a fella enjoy a drink without feeling like he’s gotta perform?”

Steve narrows his eyes at Bucky, who looks flushed under the dim lights. He doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean. He feels like he’s teetering on the edge of something huge, catastrophic. “I’m not performing anything.” Bucky sighs and shakes his head. “Why’d you bring me here, Buck? Surely there’s better things for you to be doing than trying to find me a date in a queer bar. These guys have got higher standards than that.”

Bucky just stares at him. “You are the most wilfully ignorant bastard I’ve ever met in my life,” he says. “You ain’t got no sense, do ya? Nothing rattling in that big head of yours.”

Steve squares his jaw and faces Bucky head on. It’s the closest they’ve come to a fight in months. “If you brought me here to humiliate and insult me, it’s working. Don’t think I won’t mess up that pretty face of yours.” Steve’s bluffing. As if he would damage a work of art. He’s a historian, now.

Bucky’s eye bulge in incredulity. He downs the whiskey the bartender puts in front of him, before he gets into Steve’s space, a finger jabbing into Steve’s breastbone, close enough that Steve weak eyesight can make out his features and the way the dim light plays across the freckles on the bridge of his nose. “I know you’re smarter than this, Steve. I know you know I want you. If you wanna play dumb on your own terms, that’s fine, but me? I’m gonna be truthful for once.”

“But you’re—” Steve starts, unable to comprehend what Bucky is telling him. “You fuck women.”

“Because I can’t fuck you.” He laughs, a bitter sound that doesn’t register in Steve’s good ear until a few seconds after he sees Bucky’s mouth make the shape of it. “Do you know how humiliating it is to jerk off every night while the person I’m jerking off to sleeps two feet away?” He lets his hand drop and backs off. “I get it, you don’t think of me that way. You don’t think of anyone that way. I’m not gonna judge you. But don’t ever think of me as some cartoon character. I’m queer, Steve, and you can just live with that.”

He shakes his head and turns, disappearing into the crowd on the dance floor, and Steve is left too stunned to move. It takes him a minute to register what Bucky said, and then the rest of the walk home alone to digest it. He doesn’t sleep that night, even after Bucky gets in, tiptoeing quietly to the bed, smelling like good cologne and sweat instead of alcohol and women’s perfume.

~

Steve expects a few weeks of terse silence between them to pass, or maybe even Bucky moving out, but what he gets instead is Bucky shoving him awake the next morning with a mug of cheap coffee under his nose, moving him over on the bed so he can sit up next to him. Steve grumbles but takes the peace offering, moving around until they’re shoulder to shoulder, leaning up against the wall.

“I don’t take back what I said.” Bucky’s voice is terse, and Steve listens intently. “I’m queer, and I’m proud of it, no matter what anyone else says. You of all people should know what that’s like, to be told your whole life you ain’t worth shit just because of who you are. I stood up to every motherfucker who looked at you sideways, some you know about and some you don’t, because you’re my--” He pauses for a second to look out the window. Two alley cats are snuggled up together on the fire escape, basking in the warmth of the morning sun. Bucky’s heat is a wall against him, warming him up all the way through. “You’re my Steve. Nothing’s gonna change that, and I’m not leaving, because this is my home, too, so just deal with that. We gotta find a way to deal with that, together.”

They sit in silence for a few minutes while the weight of Bucky’s words settles over them. They sip their coffee and listen to the sound of the streets coming to life, Brooklyn beneath and around them. 

“You go with guys, sometimes?” 

Bucky shrugs. “Yeah, sometimes. Easier than girls, don’t have to buy ‘em drinks.”

Steve hums. “I don’t think a guy would ever want me. Girls don’t want me, can’t imagine it any other way.”

Bucky makes an affronted noise. “What the hell am I then, an alien?”

Steve feels something warm up his stomach as he sizes Bucky up. “Have you looked in a mirror lately?” he says, and Bucky shoves him again, not hard enough to hurt but enough to spill his coffee in the sheets. The uncomfortable warmth is worth it for the way Bucky’s face lights up in a laugh. 

“Sorry, sorry. I couldn’t help it.”

“How about we—” Steve extricates the mug from Bucky’s hand and puts both of them on the window sill before he shoves Bucky back. It starts a round of roughhousing that they’re not too old to enjoy, and end up with Bucky, the stronger one, pressing Steve back into the sheets with his hands pinned to the mattress. 

“Enough,” Bucky says, trying not to laugh.

“I’ll tell you enough,” Steve says, and knees him in the thigh. 

“Ow, fuck!” Bucky collapses next to him, practically on top of Steve, laughing. “You know, every time I think I got you nailed down, you surprise me.” They shuffle around until they’re facing, each a question mark curling towards the other. “Sorry about, you know. How I feel about you. I promise not to make it weird.”

Bucky’s eyes are so blue in the light that Steve’s breath catches in his throat. His heart starts to thud in his chest, making the words hard to get out. “How do you feel about me?”

He expects Bucky to laugh it off, or say something innocuous; he’s not prepared for the vulnerability in Bucky’s eyes when he looks at Steve dead on, or the way his voice goes soft and quiet when he says his name, “Steve,” just like that, Steve. “You know, I tried to say it a couple times, but there aren’t words for how I feel about you.”

In all the time they’ve known each other, Bucky has never made Steve feel less than. Even when everybody else was pushing Steve down, Bucky always had a way of not just pulling him back up but elevating him, making him feel special, not needed but wanted. It’s like that now. Steve feels something overwhelming bubble in his chest and he has never wanted to kiss Bucky more in his life, but—can he? Can he do that? Will it ruin everything?

“I wanna kiss you,” he says, because it’s always better to be honest, and Bucky nods, his eyes wide. “You don’t have to be sorry. Um, is that okay? Can we—“

“Yeah,” Bucky says, barely a sound, looping an arm around Steve’s waist, pulling him in, kissing him as their teeth knock together and they laugh, kissing until Steve’s weak lungs run out of breath and they break apart just to stare at each other in wonder. Bucky’s face is flushed red. Steve did that. Bucky clings to him and noses into his hairline, kissing him still everywhere he can, tracing the curve of Steve’s busted spine. Steve doesn’t want this moment to end, even though he knows it must, and when it does he’s not surprised. “I got called up,” Bucky says, not much more than a whisper.

Steve freezes, inside and out. “When?”

“I got the letter last week.”

“When are you leaving for basic?”

“Tomorrow.”

Fury washes over him, the white lash of it hot in his veins, and he pushes Bucky away to sit up. “And you’re just telling me now.”

Bucky, to his credit, looks ashamed of himself. “Yeah, I knew you were gonna be pissy about it and give me that patented Steve Rogers glare.”

Steve’s glaring now, and he is pissy. “What, you didn’t think that I deserve to know that my best friend is shipping off to war?”

Bucky scrubs a hand through his hair. It’s getting long now, just in time for the U.S. Army to shave it all off. “Do you really have to pick a fight with me? Right now? I just basically declared my undying love for you.”

“To distract me,” Steve says, because he’s never backed down from a fight in his life and he’s sure as hell going to pick one about this. He pushes himself to the edge of the bed to get up but Bucky pulls him back, using proper force this time to keep Steve there. “Let go, Buck.”

“Look me in the eye, Steve Rogers.” 

Steve rolls his eyes but complies, for once in his life. Bucky looks terrified. “I’ll let you go if you want me to. I’ll let you leave and come back at god knows what time after making me spend all day pining after you on my last day as a free man, but look at me now and tell me this fight is worth what you’re giving up if you walk through that door.”

Steve looks away. It’s too much to look at Bucky right now, knowing he’s right, knowing that Steve would be the biggest idiot in the world for walking out on him. “Okay. I’ll stay.”

Bucky collapses against him and kisses him again, and it’s just as sweet as the first time. The sleep-warm smell of him is intoxicating, and it’s taken a while for Steve to realise, but now he does he knows what that smell is. Home. So they stay like that for a while, for as long as they can until the world creeps in again, using each other as a shield against the uncertainty of the future. And Steve is, for a while, the happiest he's ever been.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He has to make Bucky understand, because if Bucky doesn’t understand him then there’s no one in the world who ever will.

Because his parents died a few years back and Becca moved to Wyoming, Steve’s the only family Bucky has waiting for him when the bus pulls in. He looks tired, but there’s a definite straightness to his shoulders and bulk in his muscles that betrays what the four short weeks of boot camp have done to him. Steve feels jealousy burn in the pit of his gut that he tries to bury under joy at seeing Bucky again. 

It is nice, Steve muses, to watch the spring in Bucky’s step, hear the laughter in his voice and see it in his eyes as he catches Steve’s gaze, turning back to his fellow recruits and pointing him out. “That’s Steve,” he can see Bucky mouthe. He picks up his bag and is waving his goodbyes before he marches up to where Steve’s waiting, towards the back of the crowd of young debutantes and sweethearts, which Steve supposes he is now, and wraps him up in a hug.

Steve feels the breath get sucked out of his lungs in more ways than one. Bucky smells different—probably the food, the dirt, the mud, being around guys all the time—but it’s still him. He pulls back and Steve can see his face, the new freckles across his nose from being out in the sun, how it’s been chiselled from the drills Bucky wrote about in his letters, pink and flushed right now—from what, Steve doesn’t know.

“Hey, Buck,” Steve says, feeling a smile pluck at his harp string lips. Bucky’s returning smile is fond and soft, and now Steve’s the one blushing.

The noise of the other soldiers comes through the crowd. Steve clears his throat and steps away, purposely not looking at Bucky’s face. The things Bucky said before he left—it’s not like Steve doesn’t want to believe in a better world, but getting Bucky dishonourably discharged before he’s even had a chance to serve, let alone ruining Steve’s chances of serving, isn’t going to help them in any way. 

One of the soldiers slaps Bucky on the back with a jeer, and Steve feels a different kind of jealousy swell. He’s not one of the guys. They would never see him as an equal, as someone worthy of going off to war, because he looks the way he does.

“Where’s your girl, Barnes?”

Bucky lets out a strained smile. “Working. Couldn’t switch shifts.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Let me introduce you to—” The soldier’s already turned around and starts making noise in someone else’s direction, but Bucky grabs him and turns him around. “This is Steve. Steve, this is Galati.”

Galati’s face lights up with interest. “Steve, hey? Well, shit, Barnes just hasn’t shut up about you.”

Steve laughs as Bucky ducks his head to hide whatever’s on his face. Steve knows the feeling. The times he’s been in public when a memory of Bucky surfaces in his mind and leaves Steve incapacitated for a few minutes have happened enough that he knows it’s a problem, or it could be if he let it.

“He barely shuts up at all,” Steve says, and Galati roars with laughter. 

Bucky, who seems to know already how the rest of the conversation will go, grabs Steve’s shoulder, and steers him away from the crowd. “You didn’t burn down the apartment while I was away, did you?”

Steve feels the burn of Bucky’s hand through his shirt. It’s a hot day, and sweat sticks and slides. “Yeah, actually. I’ve been living in Ms Rafferty’s basement. She said she’s got a space for you with a ring on it.”

“Ha ha, sweetheart. You’re laughing now but wait until I show you what I got. You’ll be weeping with joy.”

Steve would doubt it, but Bucky’s made him cry from an orgasm, and whether it was the effort, the feeling, or the frustration of finally getting there, they’ll never know.

When they shut the apartment door behind them, Bucky drops his back with a thud and immediately crowds Steve up against it, lifting his face with two hands and kissing him. Steve wasn’t expecting it, and the voracity with which Bucky kisses knocks him around. His letters were devoid of what they’d been up to the day before he’d left, the things they said to each other, the ways they touched each other, and for weeks Steve had blocked it out of his mind, too focused on The War during the day to pay it any mind, too sad at night to even try to jerk off to the memory of Bucky’s mouth on him, but when he did imagine, oh—it’s nothing compared to the real thing.

Bucky’s tongue is hot and soft as he licks into Steve’s mouth, pushing on just to pull back, peppering velvety kisses to Steve’s lips and cheeks before he kisses Steve deeply, hungrily. As maddening as it is, it’s also a lot for Steve and his lungs to take, and after a minute he gets too lightheaded to continue. Bucky doesn’t seem to care; he continues kissing Steve, down his neck and collarbone, loosening his tie and the top button of his shirt to get to his skin.

“Oh god, oh—shit, Steve. Do you know how much I missed you?”

Steve takes deep breaths to compensate for his lightheadedness. “I’m getting a vague idea.”

“I had to tell them some bullshit story about a girl back home—I guess it’s only sort of bullshit. I do got you, right? Everyone was talking about their sweethearts, and what could I say when they asked? I’m not gonna lie. I’m not ashamed of you, Steve, but I just couldn’t—”

Bucky stops kissing him, face buried in Steve’s shoulder. Steve runs his hands through Bucky’s short hair and lets him rest for a minute. 

“It’s okay, Buck. You did what you had to do.” Steve doesn’t judge him. How could he? They don’t live in a world of shades, but absolutes. Without Bucky around, queers like Steve get the shit beaten out of them coming out of a bar drunk in the morning or even passing through Prospect Park, and Steve thought about going to the Coney Island bathhouses, once or twice, because Bucky said if Steve needed to he could, but it was too depressing to imagine anyone but Bucky touching him. And now, Bucky is touching him, and Steve feels too disillusioned by the society they live in that would cast not only him out but Bucky as well to really enjoy it.

“I know that sound,” Bucky says, pulling back. His eyes are wet, but he’s not crying. He makes a haunting picture. “You’re thinking too much again.”

It’s Steve who pulls him close this time, standing up on his toes to capture Bucky’s mouth, feeling Bucky smile into it when he says, “Oh no, I’m thinking. You better do something about it,” fitting his hands around Steve’s skinny thighs and lifting him up, carrying him to their bedroom, and tossing him on the bed. Steve starts on his clothes, pulling at them with the memory of the last time they were here, naked, hard, wanting, but he stops with his shirt off and trousers undone when he sees Bucky hasn’t moved but is just staring.

“What?” He feels pried open under Bucky’s gaze.

Bucky shakes his head, eyes wide. “Nothin’. Just missed you.”

Steve bites his lip and beckons Bucky towards him, who goes like a man in a trance, his eyes tracking every movement of Steve’s body. “Show me how much,” he says, and it’s as if it gives Bucky permission to give in. He tosses his own shirt away, lets his trousers fall when he undoes his belt, and looms large over Steve as he lowers himself onto the bed. The feeling of Bucky’s body on him, his skin, his breath, his hands as they kiss fervently, feverishly, rubbing up against each other, is too good. Steve still takes as long to get hard, if he can, but Bucky doesn’t care; he cradles Steve’s cock in his hand, stroking while he kisses him until Steve tells him to stop. It’s bad enough he can’t come easily, but he wants to bring Bucky off first. 

Bucky seems to have the same idea. “Can I suck you? Like we did before.”

Steve’s eyebrows rise. “You really want to?” Bucky nods, smiling sheepishly. “I thought I was the only one who liked doing that.”

“Don’t make me beg, Steve.”

“Why not? Hearing you beg is the highlight of my day.”

Bucky blushes again and kisses down Steve’s sternum. “Please, Steve,” he says, barely more than a breathy whisper that gets trapped in the air between them, “oh, god, Steve, please, I want you in my mouth, wanna taste you—”

“Jesus, Buck.” Steve feels his cock grow harder at just the words. “Those boot camp boys really taught you a thing or two.”

Bucky freezes and glances up with a frown line creasing his face. “No, they didn’t. Steve, I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t do that to you. I wasn’t with anyone else.”

“No, I just meant—talking dirty. Surely they told you stories about their girls. That’s just what I meant, is all. I mean, it’s okay, if you did. You told me I could, so I can’t get mad at you for it.”

Bucky looks away, worrying his lip. “I just didn’t want you to be lonely.”

Steve doesn’t say how he’s always lonely when Bucky’s not there. He doesn’t say it, because it would break Bucky’s heart, and he has to ship off to war soon, and then it’s just going to be harder for both of them until Steve gets there. “What about you? Didn’t you get lonely?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bucky says, a defiant hint to his tone. “You’re the only one I want. I decided on you. I don’t want anyone else.”

Steve swallows around a lump in his throat. “You decided on me?”

“Yeah.” More of that tone, more of that fondness. “You’re my guy, Steve. And I’m yours, and that’s the way it is. You got me, more than you know. I don’t care if there’s a hundred of me for you, I only care that there’s one of you for me. There’s no one else for me, you get that?”

Steve nods. The sincerity in Bucky’s voice hits him hard. How he could think that Steve wants anyone else, Steve doesn’t know. Steve is a born disaster, always getting into fights and getting sick, but Bucky takes care of him. Bucky wants him. It’s hard to bear, sometimes, knowing that someone loves him that much. That’s what it is, after all: love. They might not have said it, but that’s what it’s called.

“You didn’t answer my question. Can I?” He brushes Steve’s cock with his fingers, which is somehow more intimate than when they were fully around it, and Steve nods, sighing. Bucky moves down his body, licking and kissing him as he goes, until he’s mouthing at Steve’s cock, sucking the tip as it grows hard in his mouth, teasing the slit with his tongue until Steve begs him to stop or stop teasing. Bucky takes him in all the way, and it takes a while but they get there, Steve coming in spurts into Bucky’s waiting mouth.

~

Steve gets sick again, because he’s always sick, ends up crook in bed for days while Bucky pats his back and gets him tissues to cough his lungs up into. Luckily now Bucky’s in the military they can afford the fancy medicine that makes Steve feel at least half way decent, but, with each passing day he doesn’t get better, he can’t help but feel as though his dream of going to war is slipping from his fingers.

Bucky doesn’t get it. Steve thought that once he’d come back from basic he’d see what Steve means, being strong, knowing how to shoot, knowing how to fight, but Bucky is even more adamant Steve doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

“The guys there—they’re all kids who don’t know shit about shit. You’re smarter than to go running off to war where you’ll get killed or captured by nazis. You here what they’re doing to POWs now? It’s hellish, Steve. You’re better off sick in bed.”

Steve’s sickness-ravaged body isn’t good for much, but he knows he can point a rifle and shoot, and that should be good enough for the army, and it should be good enough for Bucky, who doesn’t know how good he has it just being able to breathe through his nose normally and be able to smell the food he cooks with the presents he bought Steve back from basic—herbs, spices, curry powder, things Steve didn’t know he would love until Bucky’s feeding them to him in meals he’s learned over the years of being a bachelor and practically Steve’s maid. 

“You should wear a uniform,” Steve says, and Bucky laughs, a genuine laugh.

“Wouldn’t mind it, actually. Been meaning to embrace my feminine side.”

When Steve’s well enough, they go out dancing, and he finds he enjoys it more now he’s got a partner. They go the bars where it’s not frowned upon for two guys to dance together, nevermind that Steve is half a foot shorter, the places where no one messes with them because they’re mob-owned, even though the drinks are overpriced and watered down and god knows what’s actually in them. Bucky takes him out whenever Steve’s well enough, now they have money to burn and a couple weeks before Bucky gets sent off to training again. They go to the bathhouses and mess around, feeling giddy on it like teenagers left to their own devices, but the novelty wears off the second time and they don’t go back. It’s not for them. They don’t need the outside world to validate what they have.

But mostly Steve just likes having Bucky home. He likes to sit by the window and draw while Bucky dozes on the sofa. He likes to bring Bucky coffee in the morning when he’s not quite awake, even though it goes cold because they start messing around and laze around in bed until noon. Steve’s only responsibility is the museum; he misses so many shifts they just don’t invite him back, and he finds he doesn’t care. There are more important things, like The War, and the thump of Bucky’s heartbeat in his ribcage when Steve rests his head there. 

He’s getting used to Bucky being there again, listening to his chatter about the squirrels he saw on his morning run, and they’re washing the dishes when he asks what he’s clearly been wanting to ask for a while now. 

“Wanna get married?”

Steve’s towel is soaked through but he keeps drying. “To who?”

Bucky stares at him. “Me, Steve. Do you want to get married to me?”

“Yeah, sure. We’ll just go down to City Hall right now. You get the rings and I’ll get the veil.”

“As long as I’m the one wearing it.”

Steve’s laugh peters out into a tense silence. “Were you serious?”

“Yes.” Bucky is silent for a minute before he dries his hands on his trousers and turns to face Steve. “I’m serious. Do you wanna marry me?”

Steve narrows his eyes, still unsure whether Bucky’s joking. “We can’t get married. You know that, it’s illegal. Besides, they’ll kick you out of the army.”

“Let them. I don’t give a shit about The War anyway. And we could just—shit, I dunno. Wait at City Hall until we find someone to marry us. We could go to Vermont, they’re pretty liberal up there. Who knows? Let’s just do it.”

Steve lets out a laugh that stretches into a grin. “Why not?”

Something in Bucky, some tension, seems to snap at the words, and he pulls Steve in, kissing him and kissing him. After they finally pull apart, they rush around grabbing jackets and shoes and are out the door in no time. 

Once they’re outside, Steve lets Bucky grab his hand and pull him along. They end up at 32 Sands Street just as Mag is opening, and she has a few things to say. She gives them an address and a name and tells them to “Bring some lettuce, chickens”, and when they’re finally at 45 Huntington with no rings and no sense, but 20 bucks is all it takes. The ceremony happens in Gil’s courtyard, with a couple drifters as witnesses, and then that’s it. They’re married. It might as well be legal.

They pass a pawn shop on the way home and they pick out rings they can’t wear in public without attracting suspicion, but make a nice decoration on a necklace that hangs around Steve’s neck. It’s the happiest he’s ever been.

~

But time moves quickly and it slips when they’re not looking. The night before Bucky has to go back to training, Steve’s asthma flares up again and he’s up coughing the entire night. He wants to make the most of it, but he can’t lay down without almost passing out or cracking a rib like he did when he had whooping cough as a kid, so he and Bucky sit up against the wall and Steve dozes with his head on Bucky’s shoulder. When the sun starts to break over the skyline, Steve feels the finality of the moment. Bucky’s going to be gone for another month, maybe more. How long does it take to craft the perfect soldier? Bucky likes to joke that he’s good at following orders, so maybe Steve should try bossing him around, but every time he does Steve can’t suppress the rage in himself and he stops talking for a while. He doesn’t, now. There’s something he wants.

He clears his throat and reaches over to the dresser to pull out the tub of vaseline. “I’ve been talking to some people,” he says, and presses the tub into Bucky’s hand. “I know how sex works, so I don’t know why you’re being so precious with me. I told you before, I’m not some in—someone who needs to be handled. I’m not china.”

Bucky looks down and then back up at Steve with a hint of wonder. “You really want to?”

“I don’t know why you haven’t suggested it, you mook. Did you think I was gonna wait around forever for you to get your act together?”

Steve shucks his sleep pants and situates himself in Bucky’s lap, relishing the way Bucky’s hands come up to steady him. 

“Oh, you know how sex works, do ya?”

“Shut up,” Steve says, and kisses him. He reaches down to pull Bucky’s cock out and is rewarded by the feeling of it growing hard in his hand.

“Fuck, okay, yeah.” Bucky manages to fumble the tub open and slicks himself up. “Are you gonna be—okay, fuck, yeah, sure,” he babbles as Steve sinks ever-so-slowly onto him. It’s tight, and it hurts at first, but he’s determined, and when Steve is determined nothing stops him. A minute passes of Steve getting comfortable and Bucky looking like he’s about to pass out, his head tipped back to expose the long column of his throat, the way his adam’s apple bobs as he swallows reflexively, the soft noises he makes as Steve slides all the way down. Bucky makes words that peter into rough sounds, babbling encouragement that spurs Steve on. “Fuck, Stevie, Steve, you feel so good, jesus, this is—amazing, unngh, feels so right like this, never wanted anything else, just you, god, just you, only you.”

Steve tries to not let it go to his head but he’s so full—of Bucky’s cock, of Bucky’s words, his head buzzing and empty at the same time as he grows accustom to the feelings and sensations. Having Bucky in him, it’s—a lot. It soothes the dull ache of need that follows him around when he’s with Bucky, and sometimes when he’s not, as if just this could sate his loneliness. These past few weeks are the happiest of his life, the weight of the rings around his neck freeing and exhilarating. Bucky has to leave soon but they have this. It’s all Steve needs.

When he starts to move, Bucky’s rambling stops but his noises continue, ragged intakes of breath and low grunts, his hands coming up to grab Steve’s hips, pull him closer so he can kiss him. “I love you, you know that? I love you so fucking much.” Steve starts to grind down as much as he can, and it turns into a messy, unpracticed slide of their bodies that feels so good, better than Steve imagined it would, and when Bucky’s waving goodbye through the bus windows, Steve feels his muscles ache in the most pleasant way while the emptiness and loneliness now Bucky’s gone gnaw at him from the inside.

~

By the time Bucky comes back—just for one night this time, not enough, not nearly enough—Steve’s too far gone in his fight to be seen, to be equal, to pay him much mind. It’s not like he loves Bucky any less, but when Bucky pulls him into an alley and kisses him, Steve pushes him away.

“It’s too risky,” he says, glancing around, spooked at the noises of people walking past. 

Bucky scoffs. “Since when has that ever stopped you?”

Steve can feel himself standing on the edge of a precipice. He’s close, he knows it. Bucky may deride the idea of Steve finally getting into the military, but Steve is going to do it, with or without Bucky’s permission, with his flat feet and his crooked spine, with his determination and his guts.

And then Bucky’s gone again, and those are all Steve has.

~

He can breathe—it shocks him just as much as the procedure and he gulps in big lungfuls of precious air that make him high from the adrenaline. His muscles don’t ache and he can see better than he ever has, hear better than he ever has.

He watches Erskine die in front of him, his first casualty, and, later, takes his necklace from Erskin’s curled fingers, wiping the blood off the metal.

~

It doesn’t wear off. Day after day he feels incredible, strong, powerful. He can lift a motorcycle over his head. He can command a crowd with just a smile. He can beat up any man who crosses him, although he doesn’t, because it’s not fair anymore. He travels and sees new places he couldn’t go when he was constantly sick, and the whole time he marvels at how he never once falters in his energy or his determination. He has to piss eighteen times a day, and, now that his dick gets hard all the time, he spends a lot of it jerking off, but it’s worth it for the way he barely breaks a sweat running twelve miles. 

But it’s not quite right. He wants to fight, to be on the front lines. He wants to use his body for its intended purpose. And—he misses Bucky. He thinks about the last time they saw each other, how determined he was regardless of Bucky, and he has to live with that regret. Bucky’s letters stop coming a couple weeks before the troupe hits Europe, and Steve tries not to worry. Postal service gets backed up all the time. It’s happened before. 

He’s full of energy with nowhere to put and when he hears that Bucky’s been captured he knows what he has to do. He drops from a plane into nazi territory like a thief in the night and steals Bucky back, the need to see him again burning a hole in his heart in the shape of the grief he felt for the briefest few hours before he saw Bucky again. He’s there, and real, and alive—he trembles in Steve’s hands but he’s cognizant enough to make it across the fire, and Steve knows when he jumps across that it’s a reflection of the evil that tried to take Bucky away from him. He makes it through.

The next few days travel are hellish, and Bucky passes out a few times, coming to each time with a shocked smile at seeing Steve. Once, he pukes behind a tree and his legs give way, but he’s still conscious. Steve tells the rest of the infantry to keep going and sits with him. He’s been wary of touching Bucky, keeping in mind how he found Bucky strapped to a table and he might not appreciate people touching him. Steve doesn’t care if the others know they’re queer, or together—and probably Bucky doesn’t either—because he’s bigger now, he’s stronger, he’s Captain America. Phillips can’t tell him what to do, and even the president can’t touch him. 

Bucky looks exhausted. He’s kept pushing himself and Steve wants to wrap him in a blanket, make him the stew with the Tuscan seasoning he loves so much, and take care of Bucky the way Bucky used to take care of him. Bucky leans back against the tree and purposefully doesn’t look at Steve when he sits down, too.

Steve doesn’t know what to say. “If you’re not up to walking, you should ride in one of the tanks. I could use a rest, too.”

Bucky is silent. He picks at the scabs on his inner forearm absentmindedly. Steve wonders if he even knows he’s doing it. Finally, after minutes pass and he does speak, it’s in a quiet, furious voice. “What did it cost you?”

Steve clears his throat. “Nothing I wasn’t willing to give.”

“You asshole.” Bucky shakes his head, laughs once, then gets to his feet. He moves so quickly that he wobbles and Steve’s on his feet in a second, no muscles protesting, no bones aching at movement, to steady him. Even the feeling of Bucky’s skin, through a layer of dirt and muck, is thrilling, and Steve fights the urge to pull him in and kiss him until he’s not mad anymore. Bucky fights him off, barely, and Steve lets go. “Do you know what you signed up for? Do you really know? Because, looking at you, I can pretty much guarantee you took the first thing someone offered you.”

No, Steve didn’t know, not at first, but he did it anyway, and Bucky knows that Steve would do it again in a heartbeat. “I’m healthy now. I don’t get colds or infections anymore. I don’t even get tired. They fixed me, Buck.” He has to make Bucky understand, because if Bucky doesn’t understand him then there’s no one in the world who ever will.

Bucky’s eyes flash with anger. “You weren’t broken!”

“Are you telling me you’d give up your life as you are right now to sit at home with asthma and a sinus infection?”

“I wanted you safe, you fucking asshole. At least if you die in bed, you’re not getting blown up out here in the mud and shit, you’re not freezing to death on the front lines like all the idiots who were too stupid not to sign up for this goddamn fucking death parade.” It’s the first time Bucky’s picked a fight with him, and he doesn’t like it. Steve opens his mouth to defend himself, but Bucky isn’t done. “The nazis are experimenting on people, torturing people, trying to make soldiers. This eugenics shit—it’s sick. And you bought into it. You’re just as dumb as everybody else.” 

Steve swallows around the lump in his throat, a different lump than the one he had permanently when he couldn’t breathe through his nose and all the crap from his lungs got stuck in his windpipe. This lump hurts. “What did they do to you?” 

Bucky is quiet again. He pulls his rifle closer to himself, not looking at Steve. “Same thing they did to you, sweetheart, they just weren’t as good at it.”

He turns away, steadier on his feet this time, and joins the rest of the infantry. Steve touches the rings tucked into his top pocket for safekeeping, and waits a minute before following him.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky sounds resigned. “I can’t be mad about you for doing something stupid. That’s like being mad at a bird for using its wings.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t know if all the small details are right. Some I learned from experience and I just made a bunch of shit up so don’t take this as historically accurate. Probably a lot of the slang is historically inaccurate, but honestly shrug it’s a fic it’s not a research paper. 
> 
> i wrote a lil thread on tw about this fic which maybe i will do more meta about it (but i don't think anyone cares so maybe not?) which you can find [here](https://twitter.com/verzacefatale/status/1143421825549914117)
> 
> comments as always are very much appreciated and just know if you like my fic it's basically as intimate as kissing me on the mouth, which i actively encourage. who doesn't love a good platonic and yet highly erotic smooch

There’s a distance between them after that, a distance that was never there before, and for two whole days Steve suffers without Bucky beside him, who sneaks off to the med tent while Steve is talking with Colonel Phillips, and then spends the next two nights sleeping in his tent instead of with Steve.

Just because Steve can read Bucky and understand that he needs space doesn’t mean he can deal well with it. He just got Bucky back. Days of walking through shit and mud with a hundred injured guys and a couple HYDRA weapons, after weeks spent in a concentration camp, the guys were restless, and Bucky—Bucky had been through it, worst of all. Pulled out of his cell for standing up to the guards, beaten up, carried off to solitary with the threat of being gassed to death hanging over him, only to be strapped to a table, tortured, experimented on. Steve pieces the story together from a few of the guys in Bucky’s platoon, bits from what they saw and what Bucky told them on the march back, and it breaks Steve’s heart that, while Bucky was out there saving Steve’s ass all those times, Steve couldn’t do the same for Bucky when it really mattered. All Steve got was black eyes. Bucky lost part of himself in that camp and Steve can’t get it back for him.

They do more tests on Steve, and then Phillips sets him up with a private room in a cabin that he almost declines before he thinks of Bucky. He doesn’t really care what the men think of him; he’s a mythic figure in the eyes of the American people, and now word has gotten out about him taking on HYDRA by himself to free them, his fellow soldiers pat him on the back as he walks through camp in his dress uniform with his heart beating hard in his chest, nervous the way he would sometimes get when he walked home with broken knuckles and a split lip, having just been fired from another job because he couldn’t keep his trap shut. He greets whoever passes him but they don’t stop him. 

When he gets to Bucky’s pup tent, Bucky’s bare feet are sticking out of his swag. They’re cut up and bruised black, and Steve’s stomach clenches at the sight. Bucky’s lying down, but his voice carries from the mouth of the tent and—he’s laughing. He’s telling his bunkmate some story about a girl he tried to pick up back home—Steve knows this one, can remember the shiner her brother gave Bucky, who wasn’t lucky or sober enough to duck the punch—and, oh. It’s the sweetest sound he’s ever heard. He stops just short of the tent to listen to the rest of the story, but the other guy catches him and clears his throat. Bucky stops.

“Captain.”

“Private Falsworth.”

“Please, call me Monty.”

He glances over at Bucky, whose blue eyes and piercing gaze catch him off guard. He chews on the inside of his cheek, the way he does when he’s contemplating something. It can be a good outcome or bad depending on the way Bucky’s feeling, but usually it preludes an introspective quiet that accompanies thoughts like he’s not good enough to be Steve’s friend, that maybe it would be easier if Bucky was a dame and then they could get married for real. Steve’s heart is still beating hard enough to crack another rib.

“Well,” Monty says, clearing his throat again, “I joined the army to get away from other people’s problems, so I’ll just—” He grabs his boots and makes his exit.

Steve shuffles, his own boots squelching in the mud.

“You gonna just stand there, sweetheart?”

He always could read Steve better than instructions, but just the word relieves some pressure in his chest. No softness reaches Bucky’s eyes; they’re narrowed, calculating.

Steve motions toward Monty’s side of the tent. “Can I?”

“If I say no, you gonna court martial me?”

“No, Buck, of course not, I—” 

Bucky interrupts his spluttering. “Steve, sit down. Say what you need to say.”

Steve sits, but the words don’t form on his tongue. He was so focused on working up the nerve to come over here that he didn’t figure out what he wanted to say. Bucky’s picking at the dirt under his nails with his pocket knife, his fingers adept, sly and so, so pretty. Steve aches to touch them, to put them in his mouth. He can feel himself grow hard at just being this near to Bucky, his body punishing him for his hubris. He opens his mouth a few times only to close it when he can’t think of the right thing to say, if there is any one right thing. Anything would do, he supposes, but nothing comes to mind. 

Bucky waits him out, and eventually Steve spits out, “I miss you. Bucky, I really—why are you laughing? It’s not funny! You almost died, what the fu—”

Bucky rolls onto his back, howling with laughter, tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and Steve—he might be crying, too, it’s hard to tell, but he’s not laughing. He’s mad at Bucky, as he should be. They haven’t talked in days, and Bucky’s laughing at him— _at_ him, like he’s one of the drunk mooks spewing his guts up into a gutter at three in the morning, like he’s some chump. It’s the first time they’ve been out of sync that Steve can remember in their twenty-year friendship. Steve reaches over to shake him, puts his hand over Bucky’s mouth, but Bucky keeps laughing, his breath hot and wet on Steve’s palm. That was a bad idea because he’s definitely hard now, and he tries to pull his hand away only for Bucky to snatch it and use it to pull himself up to a sitting position. His laughter fades and he uses Steve’s sleeve to wipe his eyes.

“Sorry, pal, you just looked contrite for once. It was a sight I had to savour.”

“Ha ha, real funny.”

Bucky doesn’t let his hand go. Instead he holds onto it, resting it on his knee. His eyes are softer now, wet and big. “I’m waiting for the big speech that’s about to happen any time now. Three, two, o—”

“You probably think that I didn’t use my brain. That it was just a rash decision to get in that chamber and do—this—but it wasn’t. I thought about it. I knew the risks. Dr Erskine told me everything and answered every question I had.”

“Uh, huh.” Bucky doesn’t look impressed or surprised.

“I had to do something, Buck. I couldn’t sit at home with pneumonia for the fourth time while men are giving up their lives to—”

“You know what? Save it, Steve. I don’t need to hear it.” Bucky looks away, his expression dour, but he’s still holding onto Steve’s hand, their fingers curled together loosely. There are tiny scalpel cuts on the tips of Bucky’s fingers. The more Steve looks at him, at what’s visible of his chest through his shirt, at the way he holds his body and winces when he moves, the more damage he can see. God, what they must have done to him. 

“Are you really going to keep fighting me about this?” Steve is mad, but he’s running out of reasons as to why he should be. Bucky almost _died_ , and the only thing that should matter is that they’re together again.

“No.” Bucky sounds resigned. “I can’t be mad about you for doing something stupid. That’s like being mad at a bird for using its wings.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say. It’s turning into a habit. 

“Before you pulled me off that table, i really thought i was dead, and when I saw your face I couldnt believe it—it was like St Peter was welcoming me into the pearly gates. A sinner like me getting into heaven? Now there’s a joke. I guess we still don’t know then.”

They’re both quiet for a minute while Steve’s hand burns everywhere his skin touches Bucky’s—his fingertips, the web of his hand, his palm. When he does speak, for once in his life it’s with trepidation. “Does this mean you don’t love me anymore?”

Bucky turns to Steve slowly, and as he does his expression grows hurt. “How could you think that? Steve, I never stopped.”

The only things Steve is aware of are how close they are and how scary it is to close the distance between them, knowing he already lost Bucky once and maybe he will again, but he’s been brave his entire life and he’s not about to quit now. He presses his lips to Bucky’s in a hasty, messy kiss that Bucky returns immediately, using the hand that isn’t in Steve’s to pull him in by the back of his neck and deepen it. The kiss is this selfish, needy thing with both of them taking and giving in equal measure but at different times. Steve craves this intimacy, but only with Bucky; he craves Bucky in the worst way. If he has a weakness, it’s not his pride. It’s his love for this man.

“We gotta—” Bucky says, in between kissing Steve. “—close the tent, don’t wanna put on a show—”

“Wait. I have a room.”

Bucky pulls back. Steve misses him already. “You have a room? Well, la di da Mr Captain America.”

“Come on, Buck.” Steve is basically pleading, and he’s not above it. They could just close the tent flaps and get on with it, but why waste this golden opportunity? Steve’s erection can learn to wait. “If I have to pick you up and carry you, I will.”

Bucky gets a mischievous look in his eye. “Suppose those muscles have gotta be good for something.” He pulls his boots on while Steve is still trying to unscramble his brains from the kiss and then they’re out of the tent, Steve trying to hurry him along while Bucky takes his sweet time ambling through the camp, whistling the way he does after a nice meal while they’re doing the dishes. Bucky is torturing him on purpose. Steve could just about cry right now. 

Finally, when they make it to the room, Bucky pushes him against the door as soon as they’ve closed it, and, even though he doesn’t have the height or build advantage anymore, Steve lets himself be pushed. 

“Fuck, I missed you,” Bucky says, the words curling off his tongue and into Steve’s mouth, tasting like Marlboros and chocolate, which is the best combination in world. Steve never had any doubt he might taste it again, because he knew what he was going to do, and he had to believe—he _knew_ that Bucky was alive, that they would see each other again. “You have no idea how much I missed you, in that—place. I kept thinking of seeing you again, and I could hold out just a little bit longer. I could—”

When he breaks away, there are tears in his eyes which he attempts to wipe away before more form and fall from his eyelashes onto the floor. 

“Hey, hey.” Steve touches his face, his ears, his hair, his jaw, kissing each place after, drawing Bucky into him, wrapping him up with arms that he can’t encircle in one hand anymore, and Bucky lets him, him shoulders shaking as he buries his face in Steve’s chest. It’s the only place Steve wants him to be. Not on the battlefield, but here, safe, where nothing can touch him except the horrors in his head. 

They stay like that for a while, Bucky crying softly into Steve’s shirt while Steve rubs his back, until Bucky pulls away. His eyes are red and his nose running, and he’s beautiful like this. He’s beautiful every which way, and Steve can’t love him anymore than he already does; it’s just not possible. He takes Bucky’s hand and leads him towards the bed. 

“Why don’t we just lie down for a while?”

“Yeah.” Bucky sniffs, trying to clear his nose. “It’d be nice to sleep in a real bed for once, instead of a hole in the ground.”

It hits Steve then how sheltered he’s been. On the road he always had a hotel room for himself, hot meals three times a day, and a place to shower. They have showers at the camp, but no one can get that caked-mud stink off their skin, that mix of gunpowder and fear lingering in the spaces between bodies. There are private showers down the end of the cabins, and hopefully they can make use of them, to bring some colour back into Bucky’s cheeks if nothing else. 

Bucky starts pulling off his boots and then starts on his clothes, and Steve does the same, trying not to stare at the discoloration all over Bucky’s skin, the fresh cuts, the needle marks. It churns his stomach and makes him feel useless at the same time it strengthens his resolve to bring HYDRA down, if not because he needs to, but because of Bucky. 

“I know, I look a fucking mess.”

“I’m not saying nothin’.”

“Then quit objectifying me,” Bucky jokes. It falls flat with no intent behind it. Steve follows his lead and strips down to his skivvies, getting under the bed covers, pulling the other side up so Bucky can get under them, too.

“It’s the middle of the day,” Bucky says, but his words are mumbled into Steve’s shoulder, “and you smell different. Goddamnit, Steve.” It’s said without any bite to it, and Bucky mumbles some more as he curls into Steve’s body like a magnet. Steve wraps his arms around him, relishing the chance he has to do this now without feeling like a sea urchin clinging to Bucky’s back. He enjoys it while he can, until he falls asleep to the sound of Bucky’s breathing and the warmth of Bucky’s weight on him.

~

It’s night when he wakes, still wrapped around Bucky but front to back now, plastered together with sweat. Steve’s found himself in the aftermath of a nocturnal emission, as if he’s 14 again, before his body went completely to shit and he could come when he wanted to. His stomach is covered in a layer of crust and, mortifyingly, so is Bucky’s back. To make it worse, he’s hard, again, spurred erect by the heat of Bucky’s body and being so close to him. He’s still not used to his body, wonders if he ever will be, and if he won’t, how can he expect Bucky to be? He peels himself away carefully and pulls the nearest shirt and pair of pants on, drops their rings on the nightstand, grabs a towel from the wardrobe and closes the door quietly behind him.

Despite how hot he runs, the cold air hits him like a sucker punch. He all but dashes down to the showers, the porch wood stinging his feet, and jumps into the shower. At least the water is warm and the shower is private, but he doesn’t give himself time to savour it. He soaps down efficiently and scrubs himself clean as quickly as he can, wanting to get back to Bucky as soon as possible. As his hand grazes his dick he feels a lurch in his stomach and the need to touch himself becomes overwhelming, so he does that efficiently, too, thinking of Bucky safe, warm and happy in Steve’s bed, one hand braced on the wall and he strokes himself to completion, his orgasm circling the drain with the last of the soap. 

When he nears his room, he sees a familiar face. The smoke from Peggy’s cigarette curls and loops in the air like a dance, disappearing into the shadows as it rises. She’s stunning. If Steve didn’t have Bucky, he’d go for Peggy, for sure. What does that make him, though? Not like Bucky, who told Steve he only went for women because it was convenient, and he didn’t come half the time, that his mind wandered when it was his turn to receive, and if she was a little blonde thing, well, that just made it easier to imagine she was Steve. And Steve’s always had feelings for girls at the same time he had feelings for Bucky, like now, with Peggy. He’s not going to do anything about it, because he’s with Bucky now, and nothing else matters as much to him as Bucky being happy. But he can enjoy Peggy’s company. He doesn’t feel bad about that. 

“Captain,” Peggy says. Her lipstick stains the butt of the cigarette, immaculate in its femininity, and even at this late hour her uniform is immaculate, too. “Enjoying some well-earned rest?”

Steve smiles his disarming smile. “How did you know?”

Peggy’s eyes twinkle. “I have my ways. You should enjoy it. We’re heading out tomorrow, bright and early.” She takes another drag of her cigarette and stubs it out on the railing she’s leaning against. “Tell Sergeant Barnes his absence from dinner is noted, but dismissed.”

Steve feels his face heat up. “Agent Carter, if anyone’s going to be brought for disciplinary action, it should be—”

Peggy rolls her eyes and cuts him off. “Steve, relax. I’ll take Phillips down myself before they get to you. And besides, they need you. Captain America and the finest sergeant in the regiment have nothing to fear.” 

She presses her uniform flat as she straightens up, giving Steve a last smile before she leaves. It never really occurred to him since Bucky’s come back that he might get in trouble for what they’re doing together, but if it gets Bucky in trouble—what will he do? Tear down the whole army system just to be with him _and_ fight a war? Who is he, Achilles? He shakes his head and goes back inside.

Bucky’s awake when he does, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, looking even more exhausted than before he went to bed, but at least he’s not as pale. “Hey,” he says, sleepily, fondly. He pats the space next to him. “Come here so I can get a good look atcha.”

Steve shuffles over, feeling Bucky’s gaze on him, drawing Steve into his orbit, hands reaching up to touch Steve’s face when he kneels on the bed. His touch is a burning balm, aloe vera for Steve’s soul. He would close his eyes to feel it more, but he’s not used to seeing Bucky, actually seeing him even in the semi-darkness of the room, the freckles on his nose, the length of his eyelashes, the blue of his eyes. But Steve can, now. The light filtering through the window catches on the cut of Bucky’s jaw, and Steve can see him clearly. He almost cries with the wonder of it.

“What?” Bucky huffs out a laugh.

“Nothin’. My eyes work better, now. I’m not blind anymore and I can see more than two feet ahead of me.”

Bucky bites his lip. “Maybe I preferred you blind. The only person you used to look at was me.”

“Yeah, well, pal. That hasn’t changed. You’re still the apple of my eye.”

He leans down for a kiss and Bucky obliges; he tastes even worse but Steve doesn’t care. He has Bucky’s mouth and hands on him. He wants for nothing. 

Bucky opens Steve’s shirt and touches his bare chest. A frown forms on his face, a confused and hurt look that makes Steve want to retreat into himself. “Where are our rings?” Steve reaches over and picks them from the nightstand. Bucky takes them with a look of relief and puts the necklace on. He fingers the rings lovingly, and Steve is a little jealous. Their reunion was cut short, and Steve can wait, he really can, but there’s so much he wants to say and so much that can only be said through his body. “There they are. Hey, little guys, I missed you.”

“Do you three need a room?”

“Oh, are you still here?” 

Steve cuffs him on the chin lightly, and Bucky laughs again and falls back into bed. Steve watches him get comfortable, cataloging his winces. “I should get you something for the—” He goes to stand, only to be tugged back down again. 

“You’re not going anywhere, sweetheart.”

Bucky’s eyes are soft and fond and his lips are lifted in a smile that Steve just has to kiss, placing a hand either side of him as he gets his balance. There’s nothing in the world like this; he can run, jump, kick and punch, but there’s nothing that exhilarates him more than kissing Bucky. He’d give up the whole world for it, he’d fight everyone in the whole German army, and when he loses Bucky again, he accepts it this time. He accepts it because it’s his choice to, just like it’s his choice to drown that plane. He accepts it because they’ve both been through hell these past few years, and they deserve some rest. Bucky deserves some rest. Pearly gates or no, they’ll be together again, and Steve will see him, soon.

But not as soon as he thought.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw for suicidality and violence

It’s harder than Steve expects, if he would ever have expected it, to live without Bucky. The all-encompassing fear he had when he heard Bucky was captured, even the threat of losing him to the war before Steve got there, wasn’t as hard as it is now. He had Bucky. He lost Bucky. Now he has no one. 

He is adrift in a sea of cell phones and bill board ads, a hundred noises in every direction and a thousand flashing lights. His keen senses are overwhelmed by it all, and he almost wishes for his old body, his shitty eyesight and bad ear, to keep him away from the cacophany of sound and images, but they are always there, waiting outside his apartment for him like gun fire approaching from the west. He keeps his tv off and barely uses his smart phone, because it’s easier than to be reminded of all the things he’s missing out on, that he missed out on. 

His apartment itself bears no marks of him even living there, aside from the bed he makes every morning, the clothes he folds neatly away in his drawers, the one plate one mug one set of cutlery left drying on the kitchen counter. He hasn’t put any photos on his mantles, because everyone he loves is dying or already dead. He sees Jim’s granddaughters occasionally, keeps tabs on Jacques’ sons in France and Monty’s scattered over Europe. He sees Peggy, midday on Wednesdays on the dot. Routine helps her, keeps her sane, and it keeps Steve grounded when he’s barely floating above water, salt on his skin, freezing to death. It’s like he never left the ocean; it’s laid its claim on him, and soon he’ll be lost to it.

He writes to Becca, and keeps a photo of her and Bucky she sent him in his wallet, daring himself not to look at it, hating himself when he does. Bucky is 21, as handsome as he ever was; the both of them are lookers, got the gene that makes them stand out in a crowd, but Steve only has eyes for Bucky. Ever since he can remember, Bucky’s been the only thing he looks at. When he remembers Bucky’s words, “The only person you used to look at was me,” he lets his eyes run over wet, letting the pain and grief wash over him anew each time, putting the photo back in his wallet when he’s done. 

It’s not fair that he has to live now, not after making peace with dying in that long minute before the plane crashed. Hasn’t he lived enough? Hasn’t he given enough? A giant portal opens up in the sky and as he watches Howard Stark’s son fly in a mechanical suit through it and then drop back to earth, he feels it again, how futile it is, how much he owes the world that gave him his body, how much he wants to die. No, it’s not fair. It’s not fair that all Bucky wanted was a glimpse of the future, and now Steve’s the one living in it. He sits in chairs at coffee shops. He draws every monument and statue in the city. He gets paid to do public service announcements about puberty with exorbitant amounts of money that mean nothing to him. Nothing about this is a life worth living, but he’s still here. Every day he wakes up, he wakes up, and Bucky is still dead.

One day he says fuck it and gets on his bike without a sense of where he’s going. He rides through the city and out of it, away from the crowds, lights, noises, into the lush green of the countryside, and he just keeps going. When he needs to stop to refuel or eat or piss he does; when he wants to stop and admire the birds resting in the trees or the deer sluicing through a stream he does; when he feels his grief suckerpunch him and he wants to sit with it for a while, he does that, too. 

He wants to die, but he doesn’t do that. He stops at a bed and breakfast just as the sun’s going down, unaware of where he is until he sees the brochures at the front desk for all the things to do in Michigan. The woman with electric-looking gray hair hands him a key and smiles at him as she tells him the continental breakfast is free. Steve knows the cost of what’s free; freedom, he used to say, was worth it. Well, now he has freedom, and more money than he knows what to do with. He takes his key and one of the brochures and his sorry ass down to his room, where he falls asleep watching snow fall through the window.

He sets off again the next morning with no goal in mind, passing through cities that reflect the state of America now, maybe the state that it’s always been in, places he’s never been because how could he and Bucky afford a road trip across the country with two bucks between them and Steve hacking up his lungs every other day? He passes through towns with wildfires and spikes of pollution and doesn’t even slow down. He stops whenever and wherever he wants to, sampling food, taking pictures with fans—and that hasn’t changed, at least, having people want him for what he represents—taking in the climate of the country, how it’s changed, how it’s grown and receded. He sees war veterans with missing limbs begging on the street, houses not even he can afford, sights carved by nature and gifted to humanity as if maybe there is a god, like his ma taught him, and if there is she’s not only cruel, but benevolent to. He rides and rides and Bucky is still dead but he gets where he needs to go, and then he’s there.

It’s cold in the desert at night, but not as cold as it was on the front. He lies under the stars, his hand curled around the picture of Bucky and Becca, feeling the weight of the last seventy years wash over him, crush him, turn him to dust, and in the morning, as the sun rises, he is still there. 

When he gets back to New York, he calls Tony Stark, grabs his passport, and within a few hours he’s on a quinjet heading for Switzerland. 

~

When the quinjet touches down in the snow and when the hatch opens it blows a gust of freezing air inside. 

“Well, it sure is a frigid wasteland. You gonna be alright out there, Cap?” Tony’s been giving him this look the whole ride over like maybe he thinks Steve is going to crack and blow his brains out at any second. 

Steve doesn’t reply. He’s been silent for most of the journey just listening to Tony chatter about what life is like now, as if he has any idea of what it was like then. One of the only things Steve said was, “Howard was a good man,” and what followed was a snort so derisive he didn’t bring it up again. The blinding whiteness of snow and the valley walls engulf them. All around him are buried ghosts, begging to be set free.

He didn’t even bother changing, still wearing his leather jacket and steel-toed boots that he’s been wearing for the past week, and what would Bucky say? Bucky, who always took pride in his appearance, who boxed four times a week to keep his muscles strong, who put pomade in his hair right up until the army shaved it off, who pressed his clothes with an electric iron his ma bought him when he moved in with Steve. 

It doesn’t fucking matter. That’s the truth of it. It doesn’t matter that Bucky used to cook amazing meals, made sure Steve took his medicine, and fixed the heater every time it broke. It doesn’t matter that Steve loved Bucky more than he’s loved anyone before or since. And it doesn’t matter that Bucky’s dead, or that Steve’s out in the Swiss Alps with a metal detector trying to find what the army couldn’t. They didn’t find a body, and they didn’t find the rings either, but that’s what Steve’s here to do: dig through seventy years and miles of snow to find the only things in this world he cares about. 

He doesn’t find them. 

He only stops when Tony slaps the metal detector out of his hand hours later and marches him back to the ship, and it’s then, more than ever, that Steve wants to die. He couldn’t save Bucky. He couldn’t find Bucky. He couldn’t find the rings. And it doesn’t matter at all.

~

Tony takes him back to Stark Tower, and Steve goes. He has his own floor, a fridge full of food, an enormous shower, a whole screen of windows that turn into a tv, and a bed that’s big enough for four of him. It’s extravagent and ludicrous to think Steve would be comfortable in a place like this, but Tony puts him on lockdown for two weeks until he’s sure that Steve’s not going to kill himself. And he doesn’t. He stays alive for Tony’s sake, and Pepper’s. He gets the presents Tony leaves him: art books, stationery, and a few bags of bright orange cheetos. Steve likes the cheetos.

Steve trusts Tony, not just because he’s Howard’s son, but because they’ve fought together, and it means a lot to Steve to know someone else has his back now. It doesn’t mean he wants to be confronted with this fact in the form of an invisible robot keeping him essentially locked in his room as if he’s a bedridden teenager all over again, but when Tony invites him out he goes.

Steve’s still not used to modern elevators, how soundless they are, but the view is nice as they travel up six floors to Tony’s shop.

“Sorry about all this, Cap,” he says, not sounding all that sorry. “But we can’t have you, you know, jumping off Stark Tower. Would cause a bit of a scene, not to mention traumatise most of America, if not all of it. And after everything you’ve done for this country, it’s not really a hero’s death, if you know what I mean.”

Steve is touched by the fact that Tony has both his dad’s sense of entitlement and lack of tact. “Yeah, I know what you mean. Just three years ago America was at war, guys were getting their guts shot out and spilling shit and blood into the snow. You can’t really come back from seeing something like that.”

Tony, for once, shuts his mouth—at least for a minute, and then he’s giving Steve a tour of his machines, the names and uses of which Steve can’t be bothered remembering, but he takes a look at Tony’s sketches, how the quinjets are made, how his suits are put together, and thinks, man, if only Bucky could see this.

~

Natasha is a fresh breeze on a summer day. For how reticent she is to spill any of her secrets, she dives headfirst into danger with the same kind of tenacity Steve always has. She doesn’t live in black and white the way Steve does, punching bad guys and spilling blood, but in the world of shades and shadows, where a spider hides. 

The first mission they take together starts with Steve bashing down the door of a safehouse in Bangladesh and fighting off eighteen of Ophelia Sarkissian’s goons by himself, forcing the rest through the tunnel underneath the hideout where Natasha and STRIKE are waiting for them. Unfortunately, Viper herself is not there.

“We have another possible location,” Natasha says, taping her busted fingers together. “We’ll get her next time.”

Steve feels like he’s putting on a brave face when he smiles and says, “Better gear up again, then. We don’t wanna be late.”

Natasha smiles back. “Well, I think we’ve figured out what gets you in a good mood.”

Steve shrugs as he straps in and the quinjet starts to take off. “I can never turn down a good fight.”

If he owes the world his life, he owes living to Bucky, who wouldn’t want him to throw it away. He doesn’t get a say in this, but he makes peace with that. It’s his life though, and if he’s not giving it up then he’s damn sure going to do something with it.

~

That’s what his life becomes: mission after mission, one bad guy after the next. No one expects him to live in the shadows, to slink around in the night, to conspire underground; they expect a big show, so that’s what he gives them. That’s what he’s always given. He didn’t regret it when he went into the ice the first time, but time lends new perspectives. Maybe he will, one day.

~

When he starts to build up a rhythm, it feels like things are finally starting to slow down. He starts running again, as early as he can, just to feel the blood pumping in his veins, just to remind himself he’s alive. He joins Tinder at Natasha’ prodding, with a fake name and a profile pic she takes that gets his bad side. He has a few dates, some that recognise him, others that don’t. He doesn’t bother being careful about it. If people want everyone to know they fucked Captain America, who is he to stop them? His whole life is laid bare in museums and exhibits and Twitter. Every time he takes a shit seems to rate pretty highly on people’s lists of facts to collect about him. Natasha never judges him for it, and Peggy doesn’t use social media. They’re about the only two people in his life whose opinions he cares about.

It’s not Sam’s fault that after they meet Steve’s entire life turns to shit. It just happens to work out that way.

~ 

The day he sees Bucky again is the best and worst day of his life. 

The day he sees Bucky again he realises: this is what he stayed alive for. His knees sink into the concrete and he loses focus of everything around him, being hustled into a van, Nat’s shoulder bleeding fat rivers down her jacket, Hill appearing as if out of thin air. It’s a mess. He’s a mess. He does what needs to be done. And then he goes after Bucky.

~

Time passes in the way Steve is used to: mission after mission. Destroying one Hydra base after another. Tracking, tracking, tracking. Finding nothing. Finding the base destroyed before they get there. Finding the dust of what he died for in bloodied footprints and dead bodies. There are traces of Bucky everywhere he goes, and each time they think they’ve got the right lead on him, he disappears. Steve is so tired, and so very sick of Bucky disappearing on him. It carves him anew each time.

Men fall at the hands of Steve Rogers, not for the first time, and not for the last. He rips out molars before they disintegrate. He smashes heads against concrete. He rips off fingers. But nothing they tell him matters. It doesn’t matter at all.

~

Sam never stops. Against all odds, after everything Steve drags him through, Sam is an impenetrable force of everything that’s good and right in the world, everything Steve and Bucky and the Howlies fought for. Sam is a good man. He buys Steve cheetos from the vending machine of every motel they stop in, at least in America. When they get to Europe Steve realises Sam’s got a stash of them, hands them over whenever Steve’s gone quiet for too long.

Steve has to tell him, has to say it with words. In a bunker in St Petersburg, another chair reduced to hunks of metal, and Steve’s hands bloodied, nails ripped from their cuticles, fingers split down the middle. Sam helps him up and leads him back into the daylight.

“You’re a good man, Sam Wilson.” Sam laughs, a bright sound. “You’re a good friend.”

“I know, Steve. You don’t have to tell me.”

It’s then, in the dirt, while the ocean roars in front of them, that Steve feels the finality of his actions. Bucky is going to keep running, and Steve is going to find him or die trying, and Sam—Sam will have to deal with the fallout of that. It’s not fair to him. Sam might die, too.

That sobering thought wakes him up. He looks at Sam, who’s leaning back against their stolen car, numberplates switched, rear windshield smeared with mud, looking like he feels it too, this finality. Not looking at Steve.

“We can’t do this anymore.”

Sam’s shoulders sag with the relief of it, as if he was waiting for Steve to say it. “No, we can’t. Let’s just—I don’t know what you want to do, but I know what’s in your best interest.”

“Home.”

Sam nods. “Yeah.”

Steve doesn’t know what the word means. Brooklyn was home, for a while. It hasn’t been in many long years. Bucky was home, once, and now he’s back—

He’s not back. Steve’s been trying desperately to convince himself it’s his Bucky, been trying to read between the gunshots and splattered brains as if Bucky was leaving him a message, but he can’t anymore. It’s not his Bucky. That Bucky was gone the day he shipped off to basic. That Bucky came back a little off-kilter, and what was left of that Bucky was cut out of him in Zola’s lab. Steve’s seen the photos. He knows the score. It hasn’t been his Bucky in a very long time.

Steve waits until his fingers knit back together, and then they go.

~

The next time Steve sees Bucky, he— 

A table at a cafe in Bed Stuy. Steve, a notebook in front of him, his favourite subject there, on the page, in shades of gray, in front of him, in colour. A smile. Steve’s heart breaking, and then knitting back together.

“How ya doing, Buck?”

Bucky’s voice warm as desert earth, bright as the sun breaking over the shoreline. “Not bad, Stevie.” He’s alive. He’s here. And that’s what matters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Been writing in this fandom for four months (five years) and i only just realised i’ve been using australian spelling. Well, you know what. Sometimes fate is out of our hands and also I’m not going to stop it would be weird and also I don’t know how americans spell things okay, okay you got me. I don’t know shit. Please enjoy regardless

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on twitter verzacefatale tumblr chungusidentified


End file.
